Vocabulary

My friend Margaret sent me an amusing sentence from an email she had received from a car rental company. Here is the sentence, from which I have eliminated the company’s name to maintain its good reputation: Our car rental company values you as a customer,… continue reading

On Monday I led seminars for the communications group of a huge company. When I asked this sophisticated audience to find errors in sentences, they identified an error I did not intend. Here is the sentence: She was quoting from a white paper entitled “Avoiding… continue reading

I recently led a Better Business Writing class for a corporate tax department. It was a highly educated group–people with MBAs, master’s degrees in taxation, and other impressive credentials. I am happy to say that they were educated and sophisticated enough to realize that improving… continue reading

Some people talk about their mistakes in therapy. Some write about their mistakes in diaries or journals. I write about mine here. That way, I may save other people from making the same errors. The mistake: disburse vs. disperse. My mistake was thinking that disburse… continue reading

Every once in a while I find a communication habit I would really like other people to break. Here’s one: the use of the former and the latter. Every time I hear or read “the former . . . the latter” I have to rethink… continue reading

Yesterday I received a very thoughtful email from a stranger named Patrick. These are his opening paragraphs: With this email, I want to let you know that I appreciate your business writing blog so much. Regularly, I visit your blog to educate myself on writing… continue reading

One of the most common questions in any of our classes is this: When is the phrase follow up hyphenated? One of the reasons this punctuation question is so commonly asked is that many dictionaries are no help at all. They simply list both versions:… continue reading

This morning I received an email from a friend who knows a lot about grammar and punctuation. I was surprised that her message included the phrase “a MS word specialist.” It should have been “an MS word specialist” because “MS” is pronounced “em ess.” Words… continue reading

“I would feel bad if I treated you badly.” That’s an illustration of the correct use of the words bad and badly. Bad/badly is a grammar point that trips up many of us. Even people who are very careful about their speech and writing are… continue reading